Weavers Wheel Fiber & Dye Garden Tour and Open House: Textile Skills demos

Fiber & Dye Garden tour, Show & Tell of textile techniques by our local land-based fiber arts community, and plant-dyed textile sale.
About this Event

Come tour a vital and beautiful part of your local fibershed, and see and touch the fibers and textiles we're producing. Green Anchors, right next to Cathedral Park, is home to an extensive fiber and dye garden that supports a community of fiber artists. Our Open House is an opportunity to experience the plants, touch the fibers, and watch their transformation into textiles. We'll offer garden tours, demonstrations of some of the skills we practice, and samples and sales of our botanically-dyed works. The open house is also an invitation to get involved in our craft community, with classes, workshops, free skillshares and harvest events, and volunteer opportunities happening year round.

We'll begin by touring the 2-acre riverfront garden and 2500 sq ft greenhouse that grows plants for fiber and dye, as well as natives, medicinals and pollinator favorites for the on-site Portland Urban Beekeepers teaching apiary. See flax, indigo, madder, nettle, milkweed, mulberry, and myriad dye flowers and basketry plants while learning about their cultivation and uses. Take home ripe seed to start your own fiber garden.

In The Wheelhouse fiber arts studio, we'll display samples of linen, wool, silk, nettle, milkweed and fireweed fibers we've created as well as basketry and paper made by our crafty community. See demonstrations of retting, carding, spinning, weaving, cordage, home-scale silkworm raising and silk production, and natural dyeing. Touch the fibers, watch them go from straw to string, from fleece to fiber, from cocoon to silken thread.

Our own botanically dyed and printed garments and textiles will be for sale, and we'll share opportunities to get involved with this vibrant, creative and growing community through garden and nursery volunteer land-tending days, harvest and celebration events, free skillshares, and classes and workshops throughout the year, including our Weaver's Wheel and Color Wheel programs that take students through a full garden, harvest, and craft cycle with fiber and dye plants.

We welcome you to experience this beautiful place and weave yourself into our place-based textile community.